Crispin Odey Denies Plan To Become Royal Lord High Commissioner For Landfowl

It used to be said in this country that the key to success in politics was being the candidate with whom the registered likely voters would like to have a beer with. On the other side of the pond, this has never been quite so hard-and-fast a rule. While quaffing a few dozen pints with Nigel Farage is conceivable, and would give you the opportunity to punch him in the face, no one has ever wanted to sidle up to a bar with, say, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who in any case is perhaps a bit too grand to allow something so lower-class as ale to pass his lips.

That’s all a long way of saying that, while building a £250,000 stone palace to house one’s chickens might become an issue in an American congressional election, it’s no barrier at all to a political career in the U.K., which is full of parliamentary constituencies names things like "Chippenham" and "Mole Valley" and "Saffron Walden," and where until recently Boris Johnson was the third-ranking man in the whole country. This has Crispin Odey—notably a close friend of the aforementioned Rees-Mogg—thinking.

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Odey, an outspoken right-winger who backed Brexit and has previously donated to the Tory Party, UKIP and the Vote Leave campaign, told Financial News he is so unimpressed with the performance of the current political class, he feels compelled to play a bigger part in public office.

"You suddenly realise you've got to become politically involved again," Odey said. "I've wasted my time making money for the last 30 years and watching the body politic getting worse and worse."

“I know my limitations and others know them better than me!” the hedge fund manager said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News, downplaying a Financial News report that said he was looking to get more active in politics. “It is not true that I am planning to enter politics.”

Crispin Odey is the founder of Odey Asset Management, a sausage brand ambassador, and a guy who unwittingly made fellow hedge fund manager Philip Falcone's life* a living hell when he pulled this stunt: ...Odey has upped the ante for poultry accommodation – he’s building a temple for his chickens for which the stone alone costs £130,000. The Palladian-style chicken house, designed by Christopher Smallwood Architects, has won planning approval from the Forest of Dean District Council, and will sit on the hillside above Eastbach Court, Odey’s Grade II-listed home. The temple’s roof – adorned with an Anthemia statuette – will be fashioned in grey zinc; the pediments, cornice, architrave and frieze are in English oak; and the columns, pilasters and rusticated stone plinth are being hewn from finest grey Forest of Dean sandstone. Naturally, the doors will be painted in the Odey Asset Management founder’s favourite Hague Blue – “to match the doors around Eastbach Court”, according to the plans...“The temple will be a lovely place when it is finished at the end of the year,” Odey said from a grouse moor. “The chickens will be grand.” Nice for the chickens, but obviously this gesture makes Phil look like a deadbeat by comparison, as he merely allows his pet pig Wilbur to live in his apartment and has never even suggested getting her her own place. You can bet someone will be printing a copy of the article and placing it prominently on top of someone's morning paper, and god help that someone if he doesn't get on the horn about building her the god damn Taj Mahal, ASAP. Crispin Odey’s chickens come home to (a luxury) roost [Telegraph via FT Alphaville] *And the lives of all deep-pocketed animal owners.